Docia and I drove over to the secret spot after spending the morning and early afternoon looking for more bladed barite in Washington County near Potosi. We hadn`t been there for about four weeks and wanted to see if anything had changed and see if we could find some more druse plates as well as check for more pockets.  As soon as we arrived, Docia decided to walk up on top since it hadnt rained in a while to see if she could find any druse plates…..

 

….while I decided to see if I could find a new pocket….

 

…and within moments I had a shallow trench in front of me and a few druse plates popping up, which is always a good sign of a pocket nearby….…but the trench played out, so I worked around the immediate area and did some more raking and pretty soon, I had openings all over the place….

 

…and the one in the upper end, above, soon played out as seen in the photo below….

 

So I kept raking around, found a few more promising spots, and one pocket of bubbly druse, but no chips at all….

 

…and Docia walked back down with two bags full of plates of druse from above, and grabbed a couple more bags, said there were plates all over up there. I moved over to a spot about ten feet away and started raking again and soon found a shallow spot that opened up into a ledge with an opening, looking very promising….

 

…I reached down and pulled out a plate and a nice twin….very promising signs of a pocket found….

 

 

 

…within moments everything had turned around and things were looking up quite nicely for me…the pocket opened up and soon I was pulling out crystal after crystal, and a few plates too…

 

 

 

…and soon the pile began to grow even more….

 

…including some nice combo plates….

 

…and since the pocket was opening up nicely, I took a photo of it upside down….

 

…showing some nice crystals inside. I cleaned it out as well as I could and then decided to work the outside wall to the right, and that`s when the pocket took a turn….

 

 

…yes, I had to move the pile back about a foot, after doing so and digging some more,  another ledge revealed itself and opened up underneath….

 

…and with a little bit of pressure on the top of that ledge plate, it rolled over and this was what was hanging there waiting for me to find….…with just a little bit of damage, but soooo pretty to me…..

 

…..and the pocket kept going back, so again, I moved the pile of crystals back some more….

 

…allowing me more room to expand the pocket some more….

 

…I removed a few more plates and crystals and this pocket just kept on moving back some more…...which didn`t bother me in the least when I reached in and pulled out another big crystal….

 

…shortly after this, knowing I had three bags to fill up with crystals and several plates, I decided to leave the remainder of the pocket….

 

…for some friends who would be there in a few days, to clean out. Docia had left about an hour earlier with four bags full of druse plates and still more left up there…but by this time, light was beginning to fade so there was no way I could go up and even look for any. Figured I would get some another day, possibly after another good rain when more would be exposed.  I headed home with the truck bed full of bladed barite and poker chips.